First Night
Title: First Night
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Genre: Romance
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 6400
Warnings: Mention of recreational drug use
Summary: *cheesy voiceover* Can a single night turn a friendship into something more? (slight AU, Kris and Adam as roommates in L.A.)
Disclaimer: Pure imagination. No disrespect intended.
First Night
Kris was writing a song about Adam’s cologne, only it was supposed to be a song about awareness, about how, when Adam moved, the center of the room moved with him. Specifics were great; cliches weren’t. Someone needed to invent a mental spam filter, so you didn’t have to argue with yourself over phrases like I’ve never felt this way before. (“But it’s true!”)
It was time to get ready, anyway. He leaned his guitar next to the couch and went to offer up his creative lapse to the shower, where blessings of inspiration often rained down. The only thing he got besides wet was a random memory, his college girlfriend telling him that perfume smelled different on everyone. Something to do with body chemistry, she’d said.
Clean and dry, he picked up the blocky glass bottle of Dior Homme from Adam’s side of the counter. On Adam it was powdery-warm, with a sweetness you had to strain for. Adam wouldn’t mind if he tried it for himself. You probably did that when you were with a guy, he realized, borrowed each other’s stuff a lot, no big deal. A couple of the girls he’d dated had borrowed his shirts to sleep in, but this seemed more intimate somehow, more like helping himself to the shirt on Adam’s back.
He replaced the bottle. Not yet.
By the time Adam got home from the matinee, Kris had resumed his place on the couch, and he and his notebook were no longer on speaking terms. “Darling!” Adam sang out. The door shut with the heavy creak they didn’t oil because it sounded comical, like cheesy theater effects. Kris strummed a welcome. “In here,” he called back.
Adam walked into the living room with his backpack slung over his shoulder and a glossy blue shopping bag in his hand. He took in the slouch, the standoff. “Uh-oh. That looks like the writers’ block face.”
“I think I need to let it simmer for a bit. Or switch to writing poems for Hallmark cards.”
Adam made a sympathetic noise. “How was rehearsal?”
“Torres hit himself in the face with a drumstick.” That pretty much summed it up.
“Bad rehearsal-- ”
“Good show,” Kris finished with him. “How was the performance?”
“Camp as a row of tents, as always.” One of Adam’s Blood Born castmates was a recent transplant from London’s West End. Adam collected the odds and ends of slang he dropped in conversation.
“And then you bought yourself a present for my birthday?” Adam was wearing a necklace Kris didn’t recognize, a brassy-gold snake coiled in the hollow of his throat. Temptation. Talk about a cliche.
“I bought you one, too.” Adam plopped the bag onto the coffee table. “Don’t worry, it’s not your real present. But you have to wear something new on your birthday, even if it’s not technically your birthday yet. For luck.”
The tissue bundle inside the bag unrolled to reveal a plaid button-down, red on white. “Team colors.” Kris stroked the expensively weathered cotton.
“I knew you’d like that.”
Kris stood up and hugged him, one-armed because of the backpack, but not awkward. “Hey,” Adam said, concerned, when he held on.
“I’m fine.” Kris took one more deep breath of him. “I just really like my shirt.”
Adam patted his shoulder. “Give me fifteen minutes to scrub off the pallor of the crypt, and then we can head out.”
“You need a hand with the ’do?”
“Nah. If leave it undid, no pun intended, maybe I won’t get recognized.” On stage, Adam wore a quiff, which sounded like more Britspeak--for private parts, or possibly weed--but was actually a crest swept dramatically off his forehead. In its natural state, his hair was as shaggy as a pony’s winter coat. “Isn’t that awful? I expect people to recognize me.” His cheerful voice faded down the hall. “Countdown to entitlement in three, two, one . . . ”
While Adam showered, Kris traded his henley for the new plaid. Open to pectoral level, no tank underneath. Normally Adam was as eloquent on the subject of man-cleavage as Kris was about U of A football, but all he had to say to Kris’s was, “You fill that out well.”
“Thanks.” Adam was doing the same for a pair of skinny jeans, his runway-model legs tucked into a pair of boots made for strutting. Kris should be writing a song about the elusiveness of those long graceful legs, constantly carrying Adam away from him, turning his life into a chase.
On their way out, Adam asked, “Any calls about the ad?” Their roommate, Matt, had moved out a month ago after landing his dream gig, a dueling piano show in Las Vegas. Kris was in charge of finding his replacement on Craigslist. If he had his way--if tonight went as he hoped--the condo’s third bedroom would remain unoccupied permanently. They could turn it into a music space, get his guitar rack out of the living room. His bedroom could be used for Adam’s closet overflow or something, because he wouldn’t need it to sleep in anymore.
“Just one. The guy sounded like kind of a dick,” Kris fibbed for a good cause, “so I told him we’d already found someone.”
“Cool, I trust your dickdar.”
*
They made it to the restaurant in plenty of time to claim their reservation. “Mitchel Conway, party of two,” Kris said to the hostess, keeping a straight face while Adam snickered at his back.
“This was such a good idea,” Adam said, settling back in the padded booth. “Just you and me, before the whole crowd blows it out tomorrow night.” It didn’t seem to occur to him that he was on a date, despite the soft string music and the flowers on the table. “How’d you find out about this place?” He touched a fingertip to an orchid and set it trembling.
Google search, keywords romantic restaurant Hollywood. “Someone mentioned that the food was good, I forget who.”
Their server appeared, bearing menus. She introduced herself as April and embarked on the usual spiel. “We have some wonderful fresh seafood specials tonight . . . ” Practiced and friendly, but her gaze lingered on Adam with the forehead-wrinkled puzzlement that preceded the aha, the pounce. She broke off a description of cedar-planked sea bass to blurt out, “I’m sorry, but you’re the vampire, right? Marek?”
Adam extended a hand. “Adam. Thank you.” He did that, thanked people for recognizing him. Entitlement was a ways off.
“It’s just, my mom has the major hots for you.” Adam’s laugh made her blink. No one expected the ginger-ale fizz of a laugh. Marek didn’t do a lot of laughing. “I’ll stop being an annoying fangirl in a second, I swear,” she said apologetically. “But she’ll kill me if I don’t ask. Did they really insure your lips for a million dollars?”
“It’s an awesome rumor, isn’t it? We’re pretty sure the producers started it themselves.”
“She has the poster--you know, of you licking the drop of blood? I tease her about it, because I had to practically drag her to the theater. I told her Blood Born was basically Twilight, except that Edward and Jacob are both vampires and they get it on. She was like, Who’d want to watch that? Any woman with a pulse, Mom. But now she swoons over you and Devon. Mainly you.”
Adam’s ears were turning pink, but they were mostly hidden by all that dark hair. You wouldn’t notice unless you were in love with him. “I hope your dad’s not the jealous type,” Kris put in.
His presence registered for the first time. “Nah, he thinks it's kind of funny. But what about you? It must be rough, having to watch your boyfriend make out with another guy.”
“Kris and I are just friends,” Adam said easily. “The kind that don’t get naked together.”
“Aww, that’s too bad.” She grinned, cheeky. “The two of you could make a fortune.”
“Useful information,” Kris said, when she left them alone to browse the menu.
“The entertainment industry’s fickle,” Adam agreed. “Always have a backup plan.”
“Or a backdoor plan.”
Adam coughed on a swallow of water. “Wow. Maybe you can take the Arkansas out of the boy.”
“Maybe.” Secretly, Kris cherished his knack for turning Adam shockable. No one else could do it. “What are langostinos?”
“Mini lobsters.” Adam folded his menu and rested his arms on the white tablecloth. Unlike Kris, he hadn’t taken off his jacket; he got cold when he wasn’t moving around. Kris could see his favorite studded leather cuff peeking out at the edge of his sleeve. “Sorry about Marek crashing our private party.”
Kris waved it off. It was fun, watching Adam react to the attention. “I can’t hate on the dude when he’s buying me dinner. I wouldn’t want to trade places with you, though.” Kris got recognized around town sometimes, but it was low-key. Saw you the other night at the Redline, great show. Occasionally followed by, Wow, you’re even shorter up close. Never any swooning.
Adam shook his head sadly, poor naive Kris. “What do you think it’s going to be like when you’re a rock star? Chicks--and dudes--will be all up on you. I’ll be standing there waiting for you to get done signing boobs, and strangers will be feeling sorry for me instead.”
“Maybe I should go back to Arkansas before it’s too late.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Over bruschetta, Adam raised his wineglass in a toast. “To Mr. and Mrs. Allen, for producing such a delightful and talented human being twenty-five years ago.”
Kris clinked with him. “To our future X-rated collaboration. Who’s going to do what?”
This time Adam just smirked. “You mean, who’s going to do whom? As much as I’d be honored to bottom for you, Kristopher, I doubt porn consumers want to see someone my size taking it from someone your size. Size as in height,” he clarified. Kris must have been getting kind of wide-eyed.
“I bet Marek wouldn’t bottom for anyone,” Kris said, to distract himself from the imagery.
“Only if it was hate sex. Poor emo bastard.”
April brought their entrees. “Are you an actor too?” she asked Kris, as she deftly maneuvered plates from tray to table.
“Musician, actually.”
“Really? You look like you could be an actor.”
Whatever that meant. Kris opted for “Thanks” as a safe response.
Adam raised his eyebrows, but waited until she’d gone to comment. “She thinks you’re fit. Bangin’,” he translated to American. “You should get her number.”
Kris halted in the act of winding linguine. “What? Why?”
The edgy tone had Adam glancing up in surprise from his insalata whatever. “She seems like she’d be fun to hang out with. Kind of chatty, a tad inappropriate, but you’re used to that, living with me. Pretty, blonde-- ” Kris shrugged. “When was the last time you went on a date, Kris?”
“You should talk. You haven’t been out with anyone since Paul.”
Adam forked up a black olive. “As it happens, Duncan asked me out today.” Duncan Reeve was the British actor who played Devon, Marek’s traitorous protege/lover. “It would be way unprofessional, but after we’re done with the play, who knows? He’s a nice guy, down-to-earth. And cute.”
Just like Paul and Jamie and all the others. Adam’s relationships invariably died of boredom in a matter of months. “The connection just wasn’t there,” he'd sigh after each amicable breakup, then hug Kris and thank him for being so supportive. Kris had no intention of watching the pattern repeat with Duncan. Duncan of the chiseled cheekbones, who’d taught Adam to say “banjaxed” and “snog” and “taking the piss.” Who got to snog Adam six times a week.
“Plus he’s got that accent,” Adam added.
Kris stabbed at a langostino tail. They were really tiny.
“You didn’t like Paul, either,” Adam said shrewdly. “How come?”
“I never said I didn’t like him.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Kris hadn’t planned on professing his devotion over dinner. He’d hoped, though, that by now the evening would be taking on a natural momentum, flowing downhill toward The Moment. A push was in order. “You’re right, I didn’t. I was jealous.” The straight-up truth. Heady stuff.
“Oh, Kris.” Adam touched his wrist, as gently as he’d touched the orchid. He was smiling understandingly, not getting it. He leaned forward, and the snake pendant twisted and gleamed in the candlelight, taunting Kris from its privileged position. “Boyfriends come and go. At least, I hope I get to keep one someday. But no matter what, you and I are here to stay.”
“Adam . . . Yeah, I know.”
Adam poured him the last of the wine. They finished their meal, Adam spacing his bites of tomato and mozzarella to make them last. Kris thought Adam was built to carry a few more pounds, worried foolishly over it sometimes, but knew there was no point in offering to share his pasta. Adam was ever mindful of Marek’s lace-up leather pants. Only one bulge allowed in those.
April swore their lives would be forever incomplete if they didn’t try the warm chocolate cake. “It’s dark chocolate, rich but not too sweet.”
Adam aimed a thumb at Kris. “He would love a piece. Please don’t bring two forks.”
“We also do a gorgeous strawberry-champagne granita with fresh mint,” she said consolingly.
“Yeah, OK, that sounds . . . better than nothing. By the way, April"--Crap, Kris thought--"Kris’s band is playing tomorrow night at Troubador. It’s his birthday, so all our friends are coming out to raise the roof. If you’re not working, we’d love to see you there.” His winning sincerity somehow conveyed great hope on Kris’s part.
April said it sounded awesome and promised--addressing Kris’s man-cleavage--that she’d try to make it. Kris kicked at Adam’s boot under the table. I can get myself laid. Wait and see. “What’s granita?” he asked.
“A fancy snow cone,” Adam said.
A conservatively dressed couple, around the same age as Kris’s parents, exited the restaurant right behind them. The woman did a double take at Adam. “Oh, gosh. Would you mind-- ?”
“Sure, no problem.” Adam pretended to bite her neck while her husband took a picture with his phone. The women and the gay guys always wanted the pretend bite. The straight guys--what few there were--asked for the snarly rageface.
“You’re the politest vampire ever,” Kris told him.
“Thank you.”
The valet didn’t recognize Adam, but he flirted with him anyway. He was cute, slight and delicate-featured, probably down-to-earth too. “Will you be calling him later?” Kris asked, snippy and not giving a shit, as Adam put the car in gear.
“His name is Neil. Dude. Can you imagine?” They exchanged a look of mutual ew. “Next up, pub crawl?”
A bar meant more interruptions, more delay. “I vote nightcap at home, if you don’t mind.”
“Anything you want.”
*
The liquor cabinet yielded up an unopened fifth of Johnnie Walker Black, a shot’s worth of vodka, some bottom-shelf rum Matt had left behind, and a dusty bottle of peppermint schnapps, origin unknown. “Green tea whiskey?” Adam suggested.
Kris got down the glasses while Adam searched the pantry for the tea. “Incense and peppermints, the color of thyme,” Adam sang. “Wait, is it time, or thyme, like the herb?”
“Forget the Austin Powers acid flashback. How about ‘Primae Noctis’ instead?”
“Nooo, buy a ticket.” “Primae Noctis” was Blood Born’s romantic showstopper. “Grandiose enough to make Sir Andrew cover his eyes in secondhand embarrassment,” according to the L.A. Times theater critic, though she also said that Adam “transcended bombast with the pipes and presence of an immortal.” Maybe she was April’s mom.
“C’mon. First night . . . ” The way Adam sang it, alternately soaring and dropping to a hush, it stirred the restlessness you kept secret even from yourself, the fear that passion existed only in made-up stories and for other people. “First night of forever,” Kris crooned, low and torchy. He had his own ways of making an audience yearn. But here he was the one yearning, for Adam to sing it back to him.
He'd prepared a simple declaration--a testimony, was how he thought of it. That was the churchgoer in him, and the songwriter. But Kris was also a believer in the most direct route. He laid a hand on Adam’s shoulder, so familiar and easy, Adam smiling at him, stooping automatically for the affectionate hug. Kris raised up on tiptoe, and up, face lifted, no mistaking that.
And Adam kissed him back. Not the way Marek kissed Devon, mastering, but soft and generous and sweet. No surprise that Adam, who loved to talk and laugh and sing, loved to kiss with that mouth, too; that he respected the art of kissing. The discovery lay ahead. Would they turn frantic, tear each other’s clothes off, or just keep going, deeper and deeper, melting like warm chocolate cake, until there was nothing left to want?
Neither. Adam pulled away slowly, with regretful finality.
“Adam, why not?” There was a sound like the ocean in Kris’s ears. “Why shouldn’t we?”
Adam spoke lightly. “Since when do you bat for my team, Kris?” He picked up the whiskey bottle, then put it down.
“Since always, I guess. If you mean when did I figure it out--not long after we started living together. It wasn’t this huge, agonizing revelation. More like, Yeah, that makes sense. I just hadn’t really considered it before.” Even though Katy, his college girlfriend, had dumped him with a withering comment about wasting her time on a closet case. He'd shrugged it off as pique--she’d been on the fast track to engagement, and he’d been heading in the opposite direction. Besides, he did enjoy the company of women, appreciated a woman’s body, that guitar curve from waist to hip. “I didn’t realize that there could be . . . more. I know that must sound stupid.”
“No, not at all.” The conflict was plain to read on Adam’s face, tenderness for his best friend who was coming out to him at odds with wariness of his best friend who was coming on to him. “You missed out on your experimental phase by dropping out of college and focusing totally on your music-- ”
“If I wanted to experiment, I’d throw on a jockstrap and hit the floor at Factory. Adam, this isn’t curiosity. It’s not about wanting to open a door just because it’s there.” His words seemed to bounce off the barrier Adam had put up, useless as foam arrows. “You’ve never thought about it, honestly?”
Adam bit his lip. It was a bad sign, Adam at a loss for a response. “Time out, OK?” He cracked the seal on the whiskey and splashed some into each glass. To throw it back would be to acknowledge a crisis, so they sipped.
“I’ve thought about it,” Adam said at last. “In a what-if kind of way. The kind of thoughts you shut down fast, for your own good.”
“So now--why shouldn’t we?” It seemed so straightforward to Kris. “Isn’t it worth taking a chance? To end up with something more than a painting to hang over the couch?”
Adam met Kris’s eyes over the rim of his glass, wry. “I take it you didn’t like Drake either.”
“Nothing personal. You belong with me, that’s all.” Kris tried humor. “Charles already calls me Mrs. Lambert.”
“Charles probably thinks you can catch gay from a toilet seat.”
“That would explain his phobia of sitting down to pee.”
“Kris,” Adam began gently. And that was the sound of the door closing. “If I’m part of your . . . awakening, I’m beyond flattered. But are you sure this is about me, specifically? I’m not saying you should buy that jockstrap. But speaking as your friend--you owe it to yourself to look around, to put yourself out there. Maybe you’ll meet someone else who-- ”
Kris saw it, the exact moment when Adam’s imagination caught up with his words and he pictured Kris in bed with a guy who wasn’t him. In the moment after that, Adam whispered, “Fuck,” and took Kris by the shoulders and pushed him back against the fridge.
Kris had tried X once and never again--scared by how much he’d liked it--but while it had lasted, he’d felt the thin skin of the world burst like a ripe plum under his teeth, juices flowing. He’d believed he was seeing creation as God intended, washed in clean light; he'd been awakened. And now, now he got to kiss Adam the way he could have kissed the ground then, with euphoric gratitude. “Adam,” he breathed, rolling.
Adam sucked hard on his earlobe. “So what’s it going to take?” he murmured. “Handjob? Blowjob?” He stepped back. “Rimjob?”
Adam was going down swinging. Kris liked that, the side of him that wasn’t so Prince Charming. “Multiple-choice questions are supposed to include ‘all of the above.’” He looked directly into Adam’s eyes, and his stomach did a runaway-elevator drop. “Why don’t we take it to a bed and see what happens?”
Adam’s bed, where there was room for absolutely anything to happen, even with the bolster thing and four pillows piled at the headboard. Out of habit, Kris said, “What do you do with all the extra pillows?”
Adam’s line was, “None of them are extra,” heaping on the pity for grown men who slept in twin beds. He broke with the script. “Lift up your hips”--way down in Marek’s hungry lower register--“and I’ll show you.”
“Cut it out.” Could he ever be afraid of Adam? They rolled together. Adam pinned him and said, “Snaps,” making it the filthiest word in the English language, and yes, a silver-bell ping of fear, shivery. “Don’t rip my birthday shirt,” Kris warned, but it came out wrong, breathy and coy, like he was begging Adam to do it.
The snaps went one at a time, pop, pop, pop. “Pretty,” Adam said, the implication clear: I eat pretty boys for dessert.
“You too.” Adam’s chest was as smooth as his; Adam had chest hair, but Marek didn’t. Kris pressed closer, skin to skin. Adam spread a hand flat at the small of his back, reasserting the lead in their dance.
Come at me. Adam’s leather cuff could stay, but the little brass snake was Kris’s rival now. He found the hook in back and claimed that tempting hollow for his tongue, and Adam forgot the predatory act and squirmed and sighed, harmless--docile, even, when Kris used his teeth. The vampire liked to have his neck bitten. Really liked it.
In the lull, Kris managed to strip off his jeans mostly one-handed. His luck ran out with Adam’s. “How’d you even get these on? Here, you do it.”
Adam peeled them down with the smugness of a poker ace showing a full house. “I bet this intimidates a lot of guys, huh?” Kris said sympathetically. He reached out to touch, wondering if it was silly to be so fascinated. He had one of his own, after all. But Adam’s was so . . . sturdy. Probably enough to hurt. He stroked it, forgiving it in advance.
Adam folded abruptly. He tipped Kris’s face up for full eye contact, no more games. “Kris, I love you.” Frankly pleading. “I don’t want to lose that.”
“I love you, Adam. This is going to work. I promise.”
Adam was silent. He lowered his gaze to Kris’s hand, and the intensity in it reminded Kris of Adam on stage, delivering the play’s most famous line: What man could resist his heart’s desire offered up on a silver platter? Corny, sure, but Adam made you feel the ache in it, the price of consummation as well as the pleasure.
“Decent” was a compliment Kris inwardly resisted; he knew he could be as selfish as anyone else. But it wasn’t in his nature to plow unconcernedly through another person’s defenses, to get his way by causing damage. He gave Adam’s question back to him, stripped of calculation. “What’s it going to take?”
Adam hesitated. “Time, I guess.”
Kris’s writer’s memory had a quote for that, too. Love is patient, love is kind. “I’ll wait, then,” he said simply.
They quietly for a while. “You realize, it’s not that I don’t find you edible from head to toe,” Adam finally said.
Kris had to snort at that. “My toes are not edible. They’re just . . . there.”
They compared toes, Kris’s standard issue, Adam’s pale and black-painted. “Vampire toes,” Kris said. Their feet bumped. Predictably, Adam’s was cold. “You should’ve left your socks on.”
It was Adam’s turn to snort. “I refuse to fool around in my socks. Don’t you know that’s like the number-two bonerkiller in porn? Better stick to music, Kris.”
“What’s the number-one bonerkiller?”
“When the bottom’s not hard.”
“Oh.” Kris drew the sheet and puffy comforter over them and cuddled in, sharing warmth. Under the covers, their nakedness seemed charged with intent. Shy for the first time, he asked, “Is this OK?”
Adam shifted to face him. He said softly, “You really are the sweetest thing.”
Later, Kris would think that it never not going to happen, that nothing, no fear or scruple on either side, could have kept them apart. But when their lips met, he wasn’t thinking at all. His brain had shut off, the cord yanked right out of the wall. He was his body. They were kissing like they were starving for each other, because they were; Adam was rolling on top of him and their hips were lining up, because they were. Kris’s knees falling open, Adam’s cock hard and thrusting against his, so that’s where all your heat goes, give it to me.
And then Adam pushed his legs wide apart and up, as though he meant to fuck him without even--Kris lost it, struggling against Adam’s weight, moaning and demanding. Adam rode it out with him, not lifting off him until he fell back exhausted, no strength to cling. Just enough to open his eyes and watch, Adam kneeling, his wrist bound in black leather and his hand jerking. “Yes,” Kris said, do it I want it, and Adam cried out. It shouldn’t have shocked Kris but it did, the pelting drops of another man’s come, Adam’s come, hot on his stomach and chest.
Adam’s head dropped forward. He swayed a little. Kris made an involuntary sound of protest when he straightened and moved to get up.
“Hang on, we’ve made a mess of you.”
He came back with a damp washcloth and wiped Kris down very thoroughly, giving it all his attention, his eyes following the rubbing arcs he made. His fair skin was still stained rosy from what they’d done together.
“Are you not freaking out?” Kris asked. “Or are you so totally freaked out you look calm?”
“I’m not freaking out. I don’t know what I am. You?”
“I’m . . . You missed a spot,” said Selfish Kris, who’d kicked Decent Kris clear out of bed.
“I see it.” Adam’s hand closed around his cock. The textured cloth felt almost rough compared to the silkiness of Adam’s tongue, dragging voluptuously across the head before his lips closed around it, sucking.
Worth at least a million dollars.
*
Kris stared blankly at his own hand, riding up and down on his chest with each breath. He lifted it experimentally, then burrowed it into Adam’s hair. “Do we have anything to drink? Cold?” With the post-sex haze starting to burn off, he was noticing that he was desperately thirsty. “Besides that green stuff you like.”
Adam lifted his head from Kris’s abs. “I bought orange juice.” He anticipated Kris’s next question. “No pulp.”
“Pulp is-- ”
“Evil, I know.”
Kris checked out Adam’s ass while Adam pulled on his briefs, then led the way down the hall, naked, so Adam could check out his. “Are you checking out my ass?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Are you serious with that question?”
Adam eyed the abandoned whiskey bottle on the counter but accepted a glass of juice. He sat down at the kitchen table. Kris sat on his lap. “When you think about it,” Kris mused aloud, between gulps, “‘making love’ is a pretty weird thing to say. You can’t make love, like you can make fire.”
“What if you rubbed two sticks together?” Adam said seriously, and Kris plonked down his empty glass and kissed him. There was no taste in Adam’s mouth but the sharp sweetness of the juice. Distracted as he’d been, it had gotten through to Kris that Adam was enjoying the swallowing part as much as the rest. Not because it was rare honey liqueur, obviously. Maybe because it wasn’t. Still . . . He’d read long ago, in a waiting-room Cosmo, that certain foods made come taste better. The only one he could remember was pineapple.
“We should get pineapple juice next time,” he said.
“Mmm, pineapple,” Adam agreed, unsuspecting. “It does that stinging thing to your tongue, though.”
“Yeah, what is that, anyway?” Kris wriggled, shifting his ass strategically.
“Um . . . ” Kris put a little rhythm in it. “Um, enzymes?”
“Round Three?”
Adam stood up with Kris clasped to his chest, and Kris wound his arms around Adam’s neck, like Devon at the end of the first act. Were they still playing Scare The Straight Boy? He didn’t think so. But just in case, when they were back in bed, he said, “Your fingers are a lot bigger than mine.” He’d wanted to be face to face, so he was lying on his side, his leg hitched high on Adam’s hip.
Adam’s fingers moved, wet. Almost . . . oh. There. “Is that a good or bad thing?” Husky.
Kris couldn’t trust himself not to go to that mindless place again. “Don’t let me come like this,” he said. Adam’s cock rested heavy in his hand, but he couldn’t give it the attention it deserved, couldn’t do much more than hold it. It was so responsive, quivering at each occasional pass of his thumb. Which broke his heart a little; he didn’t know why.
“Adam. Have you ever-- ?”
“Deflowered someone?” Adam had to pause; they were both laughing helplessly. “No, you’re the first for me too.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“Just try not to tense up. Wait, here-- ” He put his fingertips against Kris’s hole. “Can you sort of push out while I’m pushing in?”
With a little concentration, Kris was able to open himself, drawing Adam’s fingers in as he closed around them again. “That’ll get us past the hard part,” Adam said. “And then we’ll go really slow.” He reached for the condom packet.
Kris’s Prince Charming. It didn’t seem fair that this should be all about him. “Don’t forget to feel good, OK?”
Adam pressed soft kisses to his forehead, both cheeks, his lips. “I like you so much, Kris. I love you.” And then, “Baby,” and if they both held their breath for those first few seconds, it wasn’t because it was hard.
Kris didn’t stay quiet. He was moaning before Adam got even halfway in, and grabbing at Adam’s upper arms and scrunching his eyes shut against how intense it was. It did hurt a little, but that was just part of feeling so full, so far up inside. He made Adam stop when he got close too soon, and then he wanted to see, so he propped himself up while Adam pulled back to show him, long glistening strokes, both of them watching between Kris’s thighs until Kris was shaking and Adam was too.
The bedframe rocked. Still slow, but slow and hard, Adam never letting up on the spot. Kris was going to come with Adam’s cock inside him. He buried his in face in Adam’s neck, sucking and biting, needing to do something with the live energy, feed it something, and Adam was panting, “Kris, oh God, don’t,” not meaning it.
*
In the morning, they were down to one pillow and almost out of orange juice. The neck of the bottle slid in Kris’s slackening grip. Adam rescued it and set it on the nightstand. He looked as wrecked as Kris felt, his hair ruffled up alertly where Kris’s fingers had romped through it, his eyes drooping, mouth turned down sulkily. Not that Adam ever sulked; it was just that incriminatingly lush mouth.
Mildly delirious, Kris said, “You know what’s surreal about sleeping with your best friend? I keep thinking, I have to tell Adam about this. But you were there.”
Adam scooped him onto his side and spooned him. One of his cold feet sneaked between Kris’s. “You can still tell me.”
“So I had sex with a guy,” Kris started, in the tone of their roommate confidences. A theatrical gasp from Adam. “God, he was so freaking hot. Gorgeous, and he really knew what he was doing. And there was this amazing sense of connection . . . I would’ve done it just to get as close to him as I could. On the other hand,” he added honestly, “I would’ve done it even if I didn’t love you, probably, because you’re just that hot.” He yawned hugely.
Adam nuzzled behind his ear, stubbly jaw lightly scraping the skin. “Hey. Happy Birthday. Beautiful boy.”
Kris turned. As long as they were both awake . . . “Freckles should taste like something,” he said dreamily. “Not cinnamon, too cliched-- ”
“Nutmeg?”
“Oh yeah, pumpkin pie, best thing in the world . . . ” Thanksgiving. Bringing Adam home to Arkansas with him, not as his best friend, but as his. It was a long way off, on the other side of summer and fall. But if he couldn't fast-forward through those months, maybe he could give Adam an advance on the time he needed to feel secure.
Energized, he levered himself upright. “I need my phone.”
“You and your non sequiturs.”
“You and your big words.” Foraging in the pile of their discarded clothes, he came up with Adam’s. Contacts, Allen, Kim. She answered on the second ring. “Adam!” she exclaimed. “How are you, honey?”
“Sorry, Mom”--Adam sat up very straight and pulled the sheet over his lap--“this is your firstborn calling from Adam’s phone.”
“Kristopher! We were going to call you later, when your dad got home.” While she got sentimental over his birthday (“twenty-seven hours of labor, it seems like yesterday”), he got nervous, physically nervous, the way he never did in front of a crowd. Cold feet, the literal, Adam kind.
“Thanks for going to all that trouble, Mom. Um, I have some good news. No, not a record deal. Better than that.” He swallowed. Adam scooted closer, so that their knees were touching. “Adam and I have decided to--have a relationship. A romantic relationship. Well, I decided, and he’s going along with it, even though he thinks I’m kind of a pain in the a-- butt right now.”
Now his grip on the phone was turning sweaty. He was bracing himself, not for rejection--never that--but for bravely masked disappointment. “I realize this might take some getting used to. But nothing’s really changed. I’m the exact same person I was before. This is just me being true to myself, the way you and Dad always taught me. I hope you’ll understand.”
What else? “Um, I’m still up for giving you those grandbabies, eventually.” That seemed to cover it. He regressed to childhood. “Say something, please, Mama.”
“Sweetheart, it’s all right.” The response was so immediate, so warmly enfolding, that he sagged with relief. He gave a thumbs-up to Adam, whose anxious expression smoothed out.
It was anticlimactic, blessedly so. She and his dad had wondered on and off for years, it turned out--his friend vibe with the girls he’d dated in high school, the breakup with Katy, trusty parental ESP. “And then there was Adam, and, well. It would be hard to miss the way you light up like Christmas morning around that boy. But we thought it was best to let you come to us when you were ready. I hope we did the right thing.”
“Always, Mama.” She sniffled. A mother’s tears were contagious. He wiped his eyes.
At Adam’s nudge, Kris passed him the phone. Adam thanked her--wiping his eyes--for always treating him like family. “You embraced me--literally--and I’ll never forget that. Believe me, I know just how special Kris is and how lucky I am. You can trust me to do my best to make him happy.” Her reply brought out his beaming smile. “Oh, I’m pretty sure that’s a lost cause.”
Kris said goodbye with a promise to pamper himself for his birthday and a request for extra pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. It was never too early to start thinking about pumpkin pie. “What did she say to you?” he asked Adam.
“That you’ve got me wrapped around your finger and I shouldn’t let you take advantage.” Adam glowed, undeterred, obviously ready to strain Kris’s orange juice by hand for the rest of their lives if necessary. His mom was never wrong. It was going to be up to Decent Kris to keep the balance.
They curled up under the covers. “Paul was jealous of you too,” Adam said unexpectedly. “He said he couldn’t compete with you, and that he felt sorry for anyone who tried.”
Kris wasn’t sleepy anymore. How could he sleep, with the wide-open door beckoning? He brushed his knuckles over the marks he’d left on Adam’s neck, not quite believing yet. “We should go to the canyon,” Adam said. Not a non sequitur. Kris was right there with him. Outside, maybe there would be room to be this happy.
“We definitely should. Right after breakfast.”
“Oh God, yes. A real omelet, not an egg-white one. With cheese.”
“Definitely cheese.” They kissed, and it was so, so sweet. It crossed Kris’s mind that he had a show to play tonight. “I can always stand at the keyboard,” he reasoned.
“You can, but-- ” Adam rolled over in invitation.
Adam, who could probably overpower him if he wanted to, spread out under him. Long legs locking on tight, the better to shove up onto his cock. Glorious lungs warming up, mmm and ohhh, million-dollar lips kissed red, fingers slipping cleverly into the crease of his ass. “You’re so wrong about the size thing,” Kris said, with the last of his coherent thought. “I would watch the heck out of this.”
--end--
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Genre: Romance
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 6400
Warnings: Mention of recreational drug use
Summary: *cheesy voiceover* Can a single night turn a friendship into something more? (slight AU, Kris and Adam as roommates in L.A.)
Disclaimer: Pure imagination. No disrespect intended.
First Night
Kris was writing a song about Adam’s cologne, only it was supposed to be a song about awareness, about how, when Adam moved, the center of the room moved with him. Specifics were great; cliches weren’t. Someone needed to invent a mental spam filter, so you didn’t have to argue with yourself over phrases like I’ve never felt this way before. (“But it’s true!”)
It was time to get ready, anyway. He leaned his guitar next to the couch and went to offer up his creative lapse to the shower, where blessings of inspiration often rained down. The only thing he got besides wet was a random memory, his college girlfriend telling him that perfume smelled different on everyone. Something to do with body chemistry, she’d said.
Clean and dry, he picked up the blocky glass bottle of Dior Homme from Adam’s side of the counter. On Adam it was powdery-warm, with a sweetness you had to strain for. Adam wouldn’t mind if he tried it for himself. You probably did that when you were with a guy, he realized, borrowed each other’s stuff a lot, no big deal. A couple of the girls he’d dated had borrowed his shirts to sleep in, but this seemed more intimate somehow, more like helping himself to the shirt on Adam’s back.
He replaced the bottle. Not yet.
By the time Adam got home from the matinee, Kris had resumed his place on the couch, and he and his notebook were no longer on speaking terms. “Darling!” Adam sang out. The door shut with the heavy creak they didn’t oil because it sounded comical, like cheesy theater effects. Kris strummed a welcome. “In here,” he called back.
Adam walked into the living room with his backpack slung over his shoulder and a glossy blue shopping bag in his hand. He took in the slouch, the standoff. “Uh-oh. That looks like the writers’ block face.”
“I think I need to let it simmer for a bit. Or switch to writing poems for Hallmark cards.”
Adam made a sympathetic noise. “How was rehearsal?”
“Torres hit himself in the face with a drumstick.” That pretty much summed it up.
“Bad rehearsal-- ”
“Good show,” Kris finished with him. “How was the performance?”
“Camp as a row of tents, as always.” One of Adam’s Blood Born castmates was a recent transplant from London’s West End. Adam collected the odds and ends of slang he dropped in conversation.
“And then you bought yourself a present for my birthday?” Adam was wearing a necklace Kris didn’t recognize, a brassy-gold snake coiled in the hollow of his throat. Temptation. Talk about a cliche.
“I bought you one, too.” Adam plopped the bag onto the coffee table. “Don’t worry, it’s not your real present. But you have to wear something new on your birthday, even if it’s not technically your birthday yet. For luck.”
The tissue bundle inside the bag unrolled to reveal a plaid button-down, red on white. “Team colors.” Kris stroked the expensively weathered cotton.
“I knew you’d like that.”
Kris stood up and hugged him, one-armed because of the backpack, but not awkward. “Hey,” Adam said, concerned, when he held on.
“I’m fine.” Kris took one more deep breath of him. “I just really like my shirt.”
Adam patted his shoulder. “Give me fifteen minutes to scrub off the pallor of the crypt, and then we can head out.”
“You need a hand with the ’do?”
“Nah. If leave it undid, no pun intended, maybe I won’t get recognized.” On stage, Adam wore a quiff, which sounded like more Britspeak--for private parts, or possibly weed--but was actually a crest swept dramatically off his forehead. In its natural state, his hair was as shaggy as a pony’s winter coat. “Isn’t that awful? I expect people to recognize me.” His cheerful voice faded down the hall. “Countdown to entitlement in three, two, one . . . ”
While Adam showered, Kris traded his henley for the new plaid. Open to pectoral level, no tank underneath. Normally Adam was as eloquent on the subject of man-cleavage as Kris was about U of A football, but all he had to say to Kris’s was, “You fill that out well.”
“Thanks.” Adam was doing the same for a pair of skinny jeans, his runway-model legs tucked into a pair of boots made for strutting. Kris should be writing a song about the elusiveness of those long graceful legs, constantly carrying Adam away from him, turning his life into a chase.
On their way out, Adam asked, “Any calls about the ad?” Their roommate, Matt, had moved out a month ago after landing his dream gig, a dueling piano show in Las Vegas. Kris was in charge of finding his replacement on Craigslist. If he had his way--if tonight went as he hoped--the condo’s third bedroom would remain unoccupied permanently. They could turn it into a music space, get his guitar rack out of the living room. His bedroom could be used for Adam’s closet overflow or something, because he wouldn’t need it to sleep in anymore.
“Just one. The guy sounded like kind of a dick,” Kris fibbed for a good cause, “so I told him we’d already found someone.”
“Cool, I trust your dickdar.”
*
They made it to the restaurant in plenty of time to claim their reservation. “Mitchel Conway, party of two,” Kris said to the hostess, keeping a straight face while Adam snickered at his back.
“This was such a good idea,” Adam said, settling back in the padded booth. “Just you and me, before the whole crowd blows it out tomorrow night.” It didn’t seem to occur to him that he was on a date, despite the soft string music and the flowers on the table. “How’d you find out about this place?” He touched a fingertip to an orchid and set it trembling.
Google search, keywords romantic restaurant Hollywood. “Someone mentioned that the food was good, I forget who.”
Their server appeared, bearing menus. She introduced herself as April and embarked on the usual spiel. “We have some wonderful fresh seafood specials tonight . . . ” Practiced and friendly, but her gaze lingered on Adam with the forehead-wrinkled puzzlement that preceded the aha, the pounce. She broke off a description of cedar-planked sea bass to blurt out, “I’m sorry, but you’re the vampire, right? Marek?”
Adam extended a hand. “Adam. Thank you.” He did that, thanked people for recognizing him. Entitlement was a ways off.
“It’s just, my mom has the major hots for you.” Adam’s laugh made her blink. No one expected the ginger-ale fizz of a laugh. Marek didn’t do a lot of laughing. “I’ll stop being an annoying fangirl in a second, I swear,” she said apologetically. “But she’ll kill me if I don’t ask. Did they really insure your lips for a million dollars?”
“It’s an awesome rumor, isn’t it? We’re pretty sure the producers started it themselves.”
“She has the poster--you know, of you licking the drop of blood? I tease her about it, because I had to practically drag her to the theater. I told her Blood Born was basically Twilight, except that Edward and Jacob are both vampires and they get it on. She was like, Who’d want to watch that? Any woman with a pulse, Mom. But now she swoons over you and Devon. Mainly you.”
Adam’s ears were turning pink, but they were mostly hidden by all that dark hair. You wouldn’t notice unless you were in love with him. “I hope your dad’s not the jealous type,” Kris put in.
His presence registered for the first time. “Nah, he thinks it's kind of funny. But what about you? It must be rough, having to watch your boyfriend make out with another guy.”
“Kris and I are just friends,” Adam said easily. “The kind that don’t get naked together.”
“Aww, that’s too bad.” She grinned, cheeky. “The two of you could make a fortune.”
“Useful information,” Kris said, when she left them alone to browse the menu.
“The entertainment industry’s fickle,” Adam agreed. “Always have a backup plan.”
“Or a backdoor plan.”
Adam coughed on a swallow of water. “Wow. Maybe you can take the Arkansas out of the boy.”
“Maybe.” Secretly, Kris cherished his knack for turning Adam shockable. No one else could do it. “What are langostinos?”
“Mini lobsters.” Adam folded his menu and rested his arms on the white tablecloth. Unlike Kris, he hadn’t taken off his jacket; he got cold when he wasn’t moving around. Kris could see his favorite studded leather cuff peeking out at the edge of his sleeve. “Sorry about Marek crashing our private party.”
Kris waved it off. It was fun, watching Adam react to the attention. “I can’t hate on the dude when he’s buying me dinner. I wouldn’t want to trade places with you, though.” Kris got recognized around town sometimes, but it was low-key. Saw you the other night at the Redline, great show. Occasionally followed by, Wow, you’re even shorter up close. Never any swooning.
Adam shook his head sadly, poor naive Kris. “What do you think it’s going to be like when you’re a rock star? Chicks--and dudes--will be all up on you. I’ll be standing there waiting for you to get done signing boobs, and strangers will be feeling sorry for me instead.”
“Maybe I should go back to Arkansas before it’s too late.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Over bruschetta, Adam raised his wineglass in a toast. “To Mr. and Mrs. Allen, for producing such a delightful and talented human being twenty-five years ago.”
Kris clinked with him. “To our future X-rated collaboration. Who’s going to do what?”
This time Adam just smirked. “You mean, who’s going to do whom? As much as I’d be honored to bottom for you, Kristopher, I doubt porn consumers want to see someone my size taking it from someone your size. Size as in height,” he clarified. Kris must have been getting kind of wide-eyed.
“I bet Marek wouldn’t bottom for anyone,” Kris said, to distract himself from the imagery.
“Only if it was hate sex. Poor emo bastard.”
April brought their entrees. “Are you an actor too?” she asked Kris, as she deftly maneuvered plates from tray to table.
“Musician, actually.”
“Really? You look like you could be an actor.”
Whatever that meant. Kris opted for “Thanks” as a safe response.
Adam raised his eyebrows, but waited until she’d gone to comment. “She thinks you’re fit. Bangin’,” he translated to American. “You should get her number.”
Kris halted in the act of winding linguine. “What? Why?”
The edgy tone had Adam glancing up in surprise from his insalata whatever. “She seems like she’d be fun to hang out with. Kind of chatty, a tad inappropriate, but you’re used to that, living with me. Pretty, blonde-- ” Kris shrugged. “When was the last time you went on a date, Kris?”
“You should talk. You haven’t been out with anyone since Paul.”
Adam forked up a black olive. “As it happens, Duncan asked me out today.” Duncan Reeve was the British actor who played Devon, Marek’s traitorous protege/lover. “It would be way unprofessional, but after we’re done with the play, who knows? He’s a nice guy, down-to-earth. And cute.”
Just like Paul and Jamie and all the others. Adam’s relationships invariably died of boredom in a matter of months. “The connection just wasn’t there,” he'd sigh after each amicable breakup, then hug Kris and thank him for being so supportive. Kris had no intention of watching the pattern repeat with Duncan. Duncan of the chiseled cheekbones, who’d taught Adam to say “banjaxed” and “snog” and “taking the piss.” Who got to snog Adam six times a week.
“Plus he’s got that accent,” Adam added.
Kris stabbed at a langostino tail. They were really tiny.
“You didn’t like Paul, either,” Adam said shrewdly. “How come?”
“I never said I didn’t like him.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Kris hadn’t planned on professing his devotion over dinner. He’d hoped, though, that by now the evening would be taking on a natural momentum, flowing downhill toward The Moment. A push was in order. “You’re right, I didn’t. I was jealous.” The straight-up truth. Heady stuff.
“Oh, Kris.” Adam touched his wrist, as gently as he’d touched the orchid. He was smiling understandingly, not getting it. He leaned forward, and the snake pendant twisted and gleamed in the candlelight, taunting Kris from its privileged position. “Boyfriends come and go. At least, I hope I get to keep one someday. But no matter what, you and I are here to stay.”
“Adam . . . Yeah, I know.”
Adam poured him the last of the wine. They finished their meal, Adam spacing his bites of tomato and mozzarella to make them last. Kris thought Adam was built to carry a few more pounds, worried foolishly over it sometimes, but knew there was no point in offering to share his pasta. Adam was ever mindful of Marek’s lace-up leather pants. Only one bulge allowed in those.
April swore their lives would be forever incomplete if they didn’t try the warm chocolate cake. “It’s dark chocolate, rich but not too sweet.”
Adam aimed a thumb at Kris. “He would love a piece. Please don’t bring two forks.”
“We also do a gorgeous strawberry-champagne granita with fresh mint,” she said consolingly.
“Yeah, OK, that sounds . . . better than nothing. By the way, April"--Crap, Kris thought--"Kris’s band is playing tomorrow night at Troubador. It’s his birthday, so all our friends are coming out to raise the roof. If you’re not working, we’d love to see you there.” His winning sincerity somehow conveyed great hope on Kris’s part.
April said it sounded awesome and promised--addressing Kris’s man-cleavage--that she’d try to make it. Kris kicked at Adam’s boot under the table. I can get myself laid. Wait and see. “What’s granita?” he asked.
“A fancy snow cone,” Adam said.
A conservatively dressed couple, around the same age as Kris’s parents, exited the restaurant right behind them. The woman did a double take at Adam. “Oh, gosh. Would you mind-- ?”
“Sure, no problem.” Adam pretended to bite her neck while her husband took a picture with his phone. The women and the gay guys always wanted the pretend bite. The straight guys--what few there were--asked for the snarly rageface.
“You’re the politest vampire ever,” Kris told him.
“Thank you.”
The valet didn’t recognize Adam, but he flirted with him anyway. He was cute, slight and delicate-featured, probably down-to-earth too. “Will you be calling him later?” Kris asked, snippy and not giving a shit, as Adam put the car in gear.
“His name is Neil. Dude. Can you imagine?” They exchanged a look of mutual ew. “Next up, pub crawl?”
A bar meant more interruptions, more delay. “I vote nightcap at home, if you don’t mind.”
“Anything you want.”
*
The liquor cabinet yielded up an unopened fifth of Johnnie Walker Black, a shot’s worth of vodka, some bottom-shelf rum Matt had left behind, and a dusty bottle of peppermint schnapps, origin unknown. “Green tea whiskey?” Adam suggested.
Kris got down the glasses while Adam searched the pantry for the tea. “Incense and peppermints, the color of thyme,” Adam sang. “Wait, is it time, or thyme, like the herb?”
“Forget the Austin Powers acid flashback. How about ‘Primae Noctis’ instead?”
“Nooo, buy a ticket.” “Primae Noctis” was Blood Born’s romantic showstopper. “Grandiose enough to make Sir Andrew cover his eyes in secondhand embarrassment,” according to the L.A. Times theater critic, though she also said that Adam “transcended bombast with the pipes and presence of an immortal.” Maybe she was April’s mom.
“C’mon. First night . . . ” The way Adam sang it, alternately soaring and dropping to a hush, it stirred the restlessness you kept secret even from yourself, the fear that passion existed only in made-up stories and for other people. “First night of forever,” Kris crooned, low and torchy. He had his own ways of making an audience yearn. But here he was the one yearning, for Adam to sing it back to him.
He'd prepared a simple declaration--a testimony, was how he thought of it. That was the churchgoer in him, and the songwriter. But Kris was also a believer in the most direct route. He laid a hand on Adam’s shoulder, so familiar and easy, Adam smiling at him, stooping automatically for the affectionate hug. Kris raised up on tiptoe, and up, face lifted, no mistaking that.
And Adam kissed him back. Not the way Marek kissed Devon, mastering, but soft and generous and sweet. No surprise that Adam, who loved to talk and laugh and sing, loved to kiss with that mouth, too; that he respected the art of kissing. The discovery lay ahead. Would they turn frantic, tear each other’s clothes off, or just keep going, deeper and deeper, melting like warm chocolate cake, until there was nothing left to want?
Neither. Adam pulled away slowly, with regretful finality.
“Adam, why not?” There was a sound like the ocean in Kris’s ears. “Why shouldn’t we?”
Adam spoke lightly. “Since when do you bat for my team, Kris?” He picked up the whiskey bottle, then put it down.
“Since always, I guess. If you mean when did I figure it out--not long after we started living together. It wasn’t this huge, agonizing revelation. More like, Yeah, that makes sense. I just hadn’t really considered it before.” Even though Katy, his college girlfriend, had dumped him with a withering comment about wasting her time on a closet case. He'd shrugged it off as pique--she’d been on the fast track to engagement, and he’d been heading in the opposite direction. Besides, he did enjoy the company of women, appreciated a woman’s body, that guitar curve from waist to hip. “I didn’t realize that there could be . . . more. I know that must sound stupid.”
“No, not at all.” The conflict was plain to read on Adam’s face, tenderness for his best friend who was coming out to him at odds with wariness of his best friend who was coming on to him. “You missed out on your experimental phase by dropping out of college and focusing totally on your music-- ”
“If I wanted to experiment, I’d throw on a jockstrap and hit the floor at Factory. Adam, this isn’t curiosity. It’s not about wanting to open a door just because it’s there.” His words seemed to bounce off the barrier Adam had put up, useless as foam arrows. “You’ve never thought about it, honestly?”
Adam bit his lip. It was a bad sign, Adam at a loss for a response. “Time out, OK?” He cracked the seal on the whiskey and splashed some into each glass. To throw it back would be to acknowledge a crisis, so they sipped.
“I’ve thought about it,” Adam said at last. “In a what-if kind of way. The kind of thoughts you shut down fast, for your own good.”
“So now--why shouldn’t we?” It seemed so straightforward to Kris. “Isn’t it worth taking a chance? To end up with something more than a painting to hang over the couch?”
Adam met Kris’s eyes over the rim of his glass, wry. “I take it you didn’t like Drake either.”
“Nothing personal. You belong with me, that’s all.” Kris tried humor. “Charles already calls me Mrs. Lambert.”
“Charles probably thinks you can catch gay from a toilet seat.”
“That would explain his phobia of sitting down to pee.”
“Kris,” Adam began gently. And that was the sound of the door closing. “If I’m part of your . . . awakening, I’m beyond flattered. But are you sure this is about me, specifically? I’m not saying you should buy that jockstrap. But speaking as your friend--you owe it to yourself to look around, to put yourself out there. Maybe you’ll meet someone else who-- ”
Kris saw it, the exact moment when Adam’s imagination caught up with his words and he pictured Kris in bed with a guy who wasn’t him. In the moment after that, Adam whispered, “Fuck,” and took Kris by the shoulders and pushed him back against the fridge.
Kris had tried X once and never again--scared by how much he’d liked it--but while it had lasted, he’d felt the thin skin of the world burst like a ripe plum under his teeth, juices flowing. He’d believed he was seeing creation as God intended, washed in clean light; he'd been awakened. And now, now he got to kiss Adam the way he could have kissed the ground then, with euphoric gratitude. “Adam,” he breathed, rolling.
Adam sucked hard on his earlobe. “So what’s it going to take?” he murmured. “Handjob? Blowjob?” He stepped back. “Rimjob?”
Adam was going down swinging. Kris liked that, the side of him that wasn’t so Prince Charming. “Multiple-choice questions are supposed to include ‘all of the above.’” He looked directly into Adam’s eyes, and his stomach did a runaway-elevator drop. “Why don’t we take it to a bed and see what happens?”
Adam’s bed, where there was room for absolutely anything to happen, even with the bolster thing and four pillows piled at the headboard. Out of habit, Kris said, “What do you do with all the extra pillows?”
Adam’s line was, “None of them are extra,” heaping on the pity for grown men who slept in twin beds. He broke with the script. “Lift up your hips”--way down in Marek’s hungry lower register--“and I’ll show you.”
“Cut it out.” Could he ever be afraid of Adam? They rolled together. Adam pinned him and said, “Snaps,” making it the filthiest word in the English language, and yes, a silver-bell ping of fear, shivery. “Don’t rip my birthday shirt,” Kris warned, but it came out wrong, breathy and coy, like he was begging Adam to do it.
The snaps went one at a time, pop, pop, pop. “Pretty,” Adam said, the implication clear: I eat pretty boys for dessert.
“You too.” Adam’s chest was as smooth as his; Adam had chest hair, but Marek didn’t. Kris pressed closer, skin to skin. Adam spread a hand flat at the small of his back, reasserting the lead in their dance.
Come at me. Adam’s leather cuff could stay, but the little brass snake was Kris’s rival now. He found the hook in back and claimed that tempting hollow for his tongue, and Adam forgot the predatory act and squirmed and sighed, harmless--docile, even, when Kris used his teeth. The vampire liked to have his neck bitten. Really liked it.
In the lull, Kris managed to strip off his jeans mostly one-handed. His luck ran out with Adam’s. “How’d you even get these on? Here, you do it.”
Adam peeled them down with the smugness of a poker ace showing a full house. “I bet this intimidates a lot of guys, huh?” Kris said sympathetically. He reached out to touch, wondering if it was silly to be so fascinated. He had one of his own, after all. But Adam’s was so . . . sturdy. Probably enough to hurt. He stroked it, forgiving it in advance.
Adam folded abruptly. He tipped Kris’s face up for full eye contact, no more games. “Kris, I love you.” Frankly pleading. “I don’t want to lose that.”
“I love you, Adam. This is going to work. I promise.”
Adam was silent. He lowered his gaze to Kris’s hand, and the intensity in it reminded Kris of Adam on stage, delivering the play’s most famous line: What man could resist his heart’s desire offered up on a silver platter? Corny, sure, but Adam made you feel the ache in it, the price of consummation as well as the pleasure.
“Decent” was a compliment Kris inwardly resisted; he knew he could be as selfish as anyone else. But it wasn’t in his nature to plow unconcernedly through another person’s defenses, to get his way by causing damage. He gave Adam’s question back to him, stripped of calculation. “What’s it going to take?”
Adam hesitated. “Time, I guess.”
Kris’s writer’s memory had a quote for that, too. Love is patient, love is kind. “I’ll wait, then,” he said simply.
They quietly for a while. “You realize, it’s not that I don’t find you edible from head to toe,” Adam finally said.
Kris had to snort at that. “My toes are not edible. They’re just . . . there.”
They compared toes, Kris’s standard issue, Adam’s pale and black-painted. “Vampire toes,” Kris said. Their feet bumped. Predictably, Adam’s was cold. “You should’ve left your socks on.”
It was Adam’s turn to snort. “I refuse to fool around in my socks. Don’t you know that’s like the number-two bonerkiller in porn? Better stick to music, Kris.”
“What’s the number-one bonerkiller?”
“When the bottom’s not hard.”
“Oh.” Kris drew the sheet and puffy comforter over them and cuddled in, sharing warmth. Under the covers, their nakedness seemed charged with intent. Shy for the first time, he asked, “Is this OK?”
Adam shifted to face him. He said softly, “You really are the sweetest thing.”
Later, Kris would think that it never not going to happen, that nothing, no fear or scruple on either side, could have kept them apart. But when their lips met, he wasn’t thinking at all. His brain had shut off, the cord yanked right out of the wall. He was his body. They were kissing like they were starving for each other, because they were; Adam was rolling on top of him and their hips were lining up, because they were. Kris’s knees falling open, Adam’s cock hard and thrusting against his, so that’s where all your heat goes, give it to me.
And then Adam pushed his legs wide apart and up, as though he meant to fuck him without even--Kris lost it, struggling against Adam’s weight, moaning and demanding. Adam rode it out with him, not lifting off him until he fell back exhausted, no strength to cling. Just enough to open his eyes and watch, Adam kneeling, his wrist bound in black leather and his hand jerking. “Yes,” Kris said, do it I want it, and Adam cried out. It shouldn’t have shocked Kris but it did, the pelting drops of another man’s come, Adam’s come, hot on his stomach and chest.
Adam’s head dropped forward. He swayed a little. Kris made an involuntary sound of protest when he straightened and moved to get up.
“Hang on, we’ve made a mess of you.”
He came back with a damp washcloth and wiped Kris down very thoroughly, giving it all his attention, his eyes following the rubbing arcs he made. His fair skin was still stained rosy from what they’d done together.
“Are you not freaking out?” Kris asked. “Or are you so totally freaked out you look calm?”
“I’m not freaking out. I don’t know what I am. You?”
“I’m . . . You missed a spot,” said Selfish Kris, who’d kicked Decent Kris clear out of bed.
“I see it.” Adam’s hand closed around his cock. The textured cloth felt almost rough compared to the silkiness of Adam’s tongue, dragging voluptuously across the head before his lips closed around it, sucking.
Worth at least a million dollars.
*
Kris stared blankly at his own hand, riding up and down on his chest with each breath. He lifted it experimentally, then burrowed it into Adam’s hair. “Do we have anything to drink? Cold?” With the post-sex haze starting to burn off, he was noticing that he was desperately thirsty. “Besides that green stuff you like.”
Adam lifted his head from Kris’s abs. “I bought orange juice.” He anticipated Kris’s next question. “No pulp.”
“Pulp is-- ”
“Evil, I know.”
Kris checked out Adam’s ass while Adam pulled on his briefs, then led the way down the hall, naked, so Adam could check out his. “Are you checking out my ass?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Are you serious with that question?”
Adam eyed the abandoned whiskey bottle on the counter but accepted a glass of juice. He sat down at the kitchen table. Kris sat on his lap. “When you think about it,” Kris mused aloud, between gulps, “‘making love’ is a pretty weird thing to say. You can’t make love, like you can make fire.”
“What if you rubbed two sticks together?” Adam said seriously, and Kris plonked down his empty glass and kissed him. There was no taste in Adam’s mouth but the sharp sweetness of the juice. Distracted as he’d been, it had gotten through to Kris that Adam was enjoying the swallowing part as much as the rest. Not because it was rare honey liqueur, obviously. Maybe because it wasn’t. Still . . . He’d read long ago, in a waiting-room Cosmo, that certain foods made come taste better. The only one he could remember was pineapple.
“We should get pineapple juice next time,” he said.
“Mmm, pineapple,” Adam agreed, unsuspecting. “It does that stinging thing to your tongue, though.”
“Yeah, what is that, anyway?” Kris wriggled, shifting his ass strategically.
“Um . . . ” Kris put a little rhythm in it. “Um, enzymes?”
“Round Three?”
Adam stood up with Kris clasped to his chest, and Kris wound his arms around Adam’s neck, like Devon at the end of the first act. Were they still playing Scare The Straight Boy? He didn’t think so. But just in case, when they were back in bed, he said, “Your fingers are a lot bigger than mine.” He’d wanted to be face to face, so he was lying on his side, his leg hitched high on Adam’s hip.
Adam’s fingers moved, wet. Almost . . . oh. There. “Is that a good or bad thing?” Husky.
Kris couldn’t trust himself not to go to that mindless place again. “Don’t let me come like this,” he said. Adam’s cock rested heavy in his hand, but he couldn’t give it the attention it deserved, couldn’t do much more than hold it. It was so responsive, quivering at each occasional pass of his thumb. Which broke his heart a little; he didn’t know why.
“Adam. Have you ever-- ?”
“Deflowered someone?” Adam had to pause; they were both laughing helplessly. “No, you’re the first for me too.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“Just try not to tense up. Wait, here-- ” He put his fingertips against Kris’s hole. “Can you sort of push out while I’m pushing in?”
With a little concentration, Kris was able to open himself, drawing Adam’s fingers in as he closed around them again. “That’ll get us past the hard part,” Adam said. “And then we’ll go really slow.” He reached for the condom packet.
Kris’s Prince Charming. It didn’t seem fair that this should be all about him. “Don’t forget to feel good, OK?”
Adam pressed soft kisses to his forehead, both cheeks, his lips. “I like you so much, Kris. I love you.” And then, “Baby,” and if they both held their breath for those first few seconds, it wasn’t because it was hard.
Kris didn’t stay quiet. He was moaning before Adam got even halfway in, and grabbing at Adam’s upper arms and scrunching his eyes shut against how intense it was. It did hurt a little, but that was just part of feeling so full, so far up inside. He made Adam stop when he got close too soon, and then he wanted to see, so he propped himself up while Adam pulled back to show him, long glistening strokes, both of them watching between Kris’s thighs until Kris was shaking and Adam was too.
The bedframe rocked. Still slow, but slow and hard, Adam never letting up on the spot. Kris was going to come with Adam’s cock inside him. He buried his in face in Adam’s neck, sucking and biting, needing to do something with the live energy, feed it something, and Adam was panting, “Kris, oh God, don’t,” not meaning it.
*
In the morning, they were down to one pillow and almost out of orange juice. The neck of the bottle slid in Kris’s slackening grip. Adam rescued it and set it on the nightstand. He looked as wrecked as Kris felt, his hair ruffled up alertly where Kris’s fingers had romped through it, his eyes drooping, mouth turned down sulkily. Not that Adam ever sulked; it was just that incriminatingly lush mouth.
Mildly delirious, Kris said, “You know what’s surreal about sleeping with your best friend? I keep thinking, I have to tell Adam about this. But you were there.”
Adam scooped him onto his side and spooned him. One of his cold feet sneaked between Kris’s. “You can still tell me.”
“So I had sex with a guy,” Kris started, in the tone of their roommate confidences. A theatrical gasp from Adam. “God, he was so freaking hot. Gorgeous, and he really knew what he was doing. And there was this amazing sense of connection . . . I would’ve done it just to get as close to him as I could. On the other hand,” he added honestly, “I would’ve done it even if I didn’t love you, probably, because you’re just that hot.” He yawned hugely.
Adam nuzzled behind his ear, stubbly jaw lightly scraping the skin. “Hey. Happy Birthday. Beautiful boy.”
Kris turned. As long as they were both awake . . . “Freckles should taste like something,” he said dreamily. “Not cinnamon, too cliched-- ”
“Nutmeg?”
“Oh yeah, pumpkin pie, best thing in the world . . . ” Thanksgiving. Bringing Adam home to Arkansas with him, not as his best friend, but as his. It was a long way off, on the other side of summer and fall. But if he couldn't fast-forward through those months, maybe he could give Adam an advance on the time he needed to feel secure.
Energized, he levered himself upright. “I need my phone.”
“You and your non sequiturs.”
“You and your big words.” Foraging in the pile of their discarded clothes, he came up with Adam’s. Contacts, Allen, Kim. She answered on the second ring. “Adam!” she exclaimed. “How are you, honey?”
“Sorry, Mom”--Adam sat up very straight and pulled the sheet over his lap--“this is your firstborn calling from Adam’s phone.”
“Kristopher! We were going to call you later, when your dad got home.” While she got sentimental over his birthday (“twenty-seven hours of labor, it seems like yesterday”), he got nervous, physically nervous, the way he never did in front of a crowd. Cold feet, the literal, Adam kind.
“Thanks for going to all that trouble, Mom. Um, I have some good news. No, not a record deal. Better than that.” He swallowed. Adam scooted closer, so that their knees were touching. “Adam and I have decided to--have a relationship. A romantic relationship. Well, I decided, and he’s going along with it, even though he thinks I’m kind of a pain in the a-- butt right now.”
Now his grip on the phone was turning sweaty. He was bracing himself, not for rejection--never that--but for bravely masked disappointment. “I realize this might take some getting used to. But nothing’s really changed. I’m the exact same person I was before. This is just me being true to myself, the way you and Dad always taught me. I hope you’ll understand.”
What else? “Um, I’m still up for giving you those grandbabies, eventually.” That seemed to cover it. He regressed to childhood. “Say something, please, Mama.”
“Sweetheart, it’s all right.” The response was so immediate, so warmly enfolding, that he sagged with relief. He gave a thumbs-up to Adam, whose anxious expression smoothed out.
It was anticlimactic, blessedly so. She and his dad had wondered on and off for years, it turned out--his friend vibe with the girls he’d dated in high school, the breakup with Katy, trusty parental ESP. “And then there was Adam, and, well. It would be hard to miss the way you light up like Christmas morning around that boy. But we thought it was best to let you come to us when you were ready. I hope we did the right thing.”
“Always, Mama.” She sniffled. A mother’s tears were contagious. He wiped his eyes.
At Adam’s nudge, Kris passed him the phone. Adam thanked her--wiping his eyes--for always treating him like family. “You embraced me--literally--and I’ll never forget that. Believe me, I know just how special Kris is and how lucky I am. You can trust me to do my best to make him happy.” Her reply brought out his beaming smile. “Oh, I’m pretty sure that’s a lost cause.”
Kris said goodbye with a promise to pamper himself for his birthday and a request for extra pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. It was never too early to start thinking about pumpkin pie. “What did she say to you?” he asked Adam.
“That you’ve got me wrapped around your finger and I shouldn’t let you take advantage.” Adam glowed, undeterred, obviously ready to strain Kris’s orange juice by hand for the rest of their lives if necessary. His mom was never wrong. It was going to be up to Decent Kris to keep the balance.
They curled up under the covers. “Paul was jealous of you too,” Adam said unexpectedly. “He said he couldn’t compete with you, and that he felt sorry for anyone who tried.”
Kris wasn’t sleepy anymore. How could he sleep, with the wide-open door beckoning? He brushed his knuckles over the marks he’d left on Adam’s neck, not quite believing yet. “We should go to the canyon,” Adam said. Not a non sequitur. Kris was right there with him. Outside, maybe there would be room to be this happy.
“We definitely should. Right after breakfast.”
“Oh God, yes. A real omelet, not an egg-white one. With cheese.”
“Definitely cheese.” They kissed, and it was so, so sweet. It crossed Kris’s mind that he had a show to play tonight. “I can always stand at the keyboard,” he reasoned.
“You can, but-- ” Adam rolled over in invitation.
Adam, who could probably overpower him if he wanted to, spread out under him. Long legs locking on tight, the better to shove up onto his cock. Glorious lungs warming up, mmm and ohhh, million-dollar lips kissed red, fingers slipping cleverly into the crease of his ass. “You’re so wrong about the size thing,” Kris said, with the last of his coherent thought. “I would watch the heck out of this.”
--end--